but it doesn't have effect (that is it does not create a count variable). I also added a "%let" or "%put" before "count" to no effect.

Question 2

I do that because I want to have a variable for the number of each observation. Is there a more direct way to extract the number of observation from dataset without creating a count variable ? I tried _N_, nobs, obs to no effect.

Re: Small macro for counter

Q2: It would be great if the observation number were available as an automaic variable throughout SAS, but it isn't. It's available within the data step with _n_ as you already know, and i SQL using the montonic() function. So if you need to do reports based on observation no, you need to store it explicitly.

Re: Small macro for counter

Q2: It would be great if the observation number were available as an automaic variable throughout SAS, but it isn't. It's available within the data step with _n_ as you already know, and i SQL using the montonic() function. So if you need to do reports based on observation no, you need to store it explicitly.